


Our Father's Sons

by lifeofsnark



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:54:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3291044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean are working through some sort of demonic scavenger hunt, and you are a clue. Once you go on the road with the Winchesters, it is apparent that someone wants you and the boys together. Back in Sioux Falls, where everything supposedly began, the boys are in for a nasty surprise- John Winchester, demon extraordinaire, has escaped from hell. He's out for revenge, pissed that the boys chose to save Bobby from hell rather than their flesh-and-blood father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

You woke up with a thundering head, aching body, and far too many questions. You’d gotten off of work, made it to your car, slipped into the driver’s seat and then… nothing. You continued to feign unconsciousness, listening hard for signs of someone else being in the room. You were laying on something hard and cold, your wrists cuffed at ninety degree angles from your body.

You cracked open your eyes… it looked like you were in some sort of old surgery suite. Thinking of everything that could go wrong, you broke into a cold sweat.  You had no idea why you were in this situation; you were a single person who had never lived in one place long enough to draw attention.

_Think. You’ve seen ‘Criminal Minds’ before. Think through this._ Okay. You were in a room without windows, so you couldn’t judge location based on sound or light from outside. If this was an old surgical theater, the place would have to be hooked to the municipal water and electric, so you couldn’t be in the middle of nowhere.

Under the flickering camp lantern, breathing in the scent of dust and air long gone stale, you laid on the cold steel table and waited for something to happen.

~~~

“What the hell is going on, man?” Dean thumped the heel of his hand into the curve of the steering wheel. “There is demon activity all over the area, more omens than we’ve seen since the apocalypse, and all of a sudden we get sent on a goddamn scavenger hunt.”

Sam flipped through the file folder in his lap. “I don’t know Dean. But you’re right, it has to have something to do with all the demon activity in the area.” The engine of the Impala purred as Sam flipped through the pages.

“What did the note say again?” Dean asked, eyes trained on the winding lane ahead of them.

“’Go to the beginning to fine me. I have the next clue. If I am not found by sundown, well… you know what that means.’ There’s a picture of a trussed up girl attached to it.”

“The beginning of what?” Dean made a frustrated sound and pressed his foot more heavily on the accelerator. The car roared.

“You said the last one, the one we found in that graveyard in Mississippi- that was the third case you worked by yourself?”

“Yeah, there was a vengeful spirit running around and I burned the bones. It was a couple weeks before I found you at Stanford.”

“Okay, and the clue before that… it was in a cursed locket. Does that mean anything to you?”

Dean thought, brows furrowed, eyes on the road. “I worked two cases with haunted objects while you were at school. And yeah, one of them was right before that ghost case in Mississippi. It was a locket with a knotted hair in it.”

“So this is the beginning of you solo hunting! What was that case?” Sam turned to his older brother, pleased to be making some sort of headway at last.

“I told you, it was that voodoo thing down in New Orleans. Who knows this much about us, Sam?” Dean spun the wheel, and the Impala skidded into a tight U-turn; shifting through the gears like a seasoned roadster Dean sped back towards the interstate.

“I don’t know. Chuck, the angels maybe.”

“But what’s the game? We know it isn’t the angels, there’s too much demonic activity. Chuck has written some fucked up shit, but he isn’t manipulative like this.”

“I don’t know man, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but you need to drive faster. It’s going to take most of the day to get to New Orleans.” Like a monster from old, the Impala roared and flew off into the distance.

Hours later, Dean merged off the interstate and began following street signs for Algiers. “It was hard for me to find then,” he told Sam, unprompted. “There was someone casting real hoodoo on people, so of course I headed into the French Quarter to look around- there was this one bar, oh man, and the bar girl there”- he caught sight of Sam’s face. “Right. Well this was a dark priest, right, and they figured they would get noticed by other practitioners if they were too close. They were hiding across the river in the Algiers area the whole time.”

The deep, honey colored light of evening in the Deep South gleamed off the chrome of the car as Dean parked baby in front of an abandoned strip mall. “This used to be the voodoo shop” he said, gesturing towards a boarded up clinic.

~~~

“Time’s up, little lady,” came a voice from the dark doorway. “Sorry ‘bout this.” A man with dark hair, deep set eyes, and a salt and pepper beard pulled an IV bag from the pocket of his coat.

“No, no, please, no,” you begged, tugging against your bindings until the tendons in your arms stood out in stark relief. “Why are you doing this?”

“Oh, it’s much bigger than you. Don’t worry about it anymore.” Slapping the inside of your elbow, he slid the needle home. He hung the bag where the camp lantern had been. “I was hoping the boys would find you, but looks like they’ve gotten soft. You might have been able to help them with all this.” Taking the light with him, ignoring your frantic screams, the door closed behind him, sealing you in darkness.

You began to grow woozy from whatever was in the IV drip, your voice weak from shouting. Faintly, you could hear shuffling outside the door. “In here!” you yelled as loudly as you could. To your ears, your words sounded slightly slurred. The door opened and the dense yellow beam of a flashlight ran over you.

“Dean!” a male voice yelled. As your eyelids fluttered, you felt pressure being held on the crook of your arm. The man must have pulled out the IV.

You felt someone pick you up, and he was so warm after the cold of the metal table. You scrunched your eyes tight against the glare of the dying light as you were laid in the backseat of a great boat of a car.

Just barely opening your eyes, you saw a very tall man with shoulder-length hair reading the label of the IV bag. “I think this is the same thing they use at dentist offices and for minor surgeries- of course, a dose this big would have been lethal.”

The other man with shorter, darker hair flipped a knife open and stabbed the pouch, letting the fluids pour all over the weed-riddled asphalt. “Solves that problem. I’m going to go back inside, see if we missed the clue.”

Your body finally decided that you weren’t in immediate danger and sleep pulled you under.

You woke up cognizant of an aching head, a dry mouth, and what sounded like the thrum of an engine. Slowly sitting up, you saw the same two men sitting in front of you. The long haired one passed you a water bottle, which you gratefully cracked. “I’m Sam, and this is Dean,” he said, gesturing to the man driving the old car.

“Thanks for saving me,” you said quietly, sincerely.

“I’m just glad we got there in time,” Dean said, glancing at you in the rearview.

“So… am I being kidnapped now?” you ask, not really sure why these guys weren’t taking you to the police.

“We need to know what you remember,” Sam asked, ignoring your kidnapping question. “We’ll take you home as soon as we get this sorted out.”

Dean pulled the car into an empty rest stop and pulled around back. He turned sideways so he could see you and Sam. “Here’s the thing. We were clearly led here to you; we had to work through a series of clues, and here you are at the end of it. Did he say anything to you? Look strange somehow?”

You thought. “No, he looked like a normal guy. Dark hair, greying beard.” You tried to remember what he said while you had been screaming your head off. “All he said was that ‘the boys had gotten soft’ and he thought I could help them. I’m guessing that means you.”

The boys sat quietly. “Now what?” asked Dean sarcastically.  “She’s the whole clue? Do we just follow her around and see what happens?”

“No, I think we need to follow the omens,” Sam said to his brother.

“Omens? What omens?” You were getting more and more uncomfortable.

“Demonic omens, sweetheart. We were led her by a series of clues and a string of demonic signs,” Dean said bluntly.

Sam looked at him disapprovingly. “That’s not very nice, Dean.” He turned to you. “Demons and ghosts and werewolves and angels… it’s all real. All of it. And we go around the country cleaning up those problems,” he said diplomatically.”

You blinked once, then twice, then jerked open the door of the car and went sprinting off along the treeline back towards the highway. You were still slightly lightheaded from whatever drug was pumping through your system, but the sound of boots pursuing you only fueled your adrenaline. You did not want to be in that car with those lunatics, no matter how attractive those lunatics happened to be. Legs pumping, you ran on.

Well, you ran until you were tackled by about 210lbs of muscular and psychotic man. You had the breath knocked out of you, that terrifying, eye-burning sensation of not being able to draw any air into your shriveled lungs.

Dean stood looking down at you. “I think you squashed her, Sammy.” Sam rolled to his feet and tugged you up to stand beside him. You bent over, hands on your knees, desperately sucking in air.

“It’s a lot to take in,” said Sam sympathetically.

“I think we need to show her,” said Dean. Sam looked at him skeptically. “What, you would just believe two strangers who told you all the weird paranormal shit you see in the movies is real? And then technically kidnap you?”

Sam wrapped his giant hand around your upper arm to keep you from going anywhere and then continued to talk as though you weren’t there. “What do you suggest we do, Dean?” he asked, full of sass.

“I don’t know- find a crossroads demon, gank it real quick, and then head somewhere to do research?”

“You want to kill someone in front of me?” You yank against Sam’s firm grip. “You guys are nuts! Just let me go and I won’t say anything, please!”

“What about Cas? He can do all sorts of things. Why don’t you give him a ring?” Sam suggested.

Dean rolled his eyes, took a few steps back, and looked at the sky. “Castiel, who art in heaven- probably, I mean I don’t know- could you please come down to visit to prevent us from killing a demon to prove a point.”

There was a sound like the flapping of huge, feathery wings and a disheveled man in a baggy tan trenchcoat appeared beside Dean.

“What is going on? I did not understand your message,” he said in a flat, deep voice.

Dean pointed to you. “We’ve been getting weird clues corresponding to demon activity, the latest one led us to her. Whoever- or whatever- took her said she would be able to help us, but he didn’t say how.  We need her to come with us to check out the omens, but she doesn’t exactly believe us about demons being real- you know, the whole supernatural thing.” He gestured with his hand.

You finally got your voice back. “Where did he come from?” you ask, pointing to the scruffy man with shockingly blue eyes.

He turned to you. “I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord.”

“Right. An angel. Tell me, does Marley show up next?”

Castiel looked confused. “I know of no Marley.”

Sam jumped in, “Look, Cas- if you could just do some kind of miracle for us to prove that we are telling the truth, it would help us out. She might stop trying to escape us.”

The angel turned back to you, an earnest expression on his face. “You should not try to flee these men. They are some of the best men that I know. If they need your assistance, you should give it to them.”

“Right. Uh-huh. Look boys, I don’t know where you found this guy, but he is just as crazy as you are. Can I go home now?” As one, the three men turned and gave you a _look._ In retaliation, you began screaming at the top of your lungs. You were tired, you’d been kidnapped, and you had a goddamn headache- at this point, why not scream?

The angel’s eyes widened infinitesimally. “Why is she doing that. Please stop doing that.” He stretched the first two fingers of his right hand towards your forehead, and you smacked him away, taking in more air so you could continue caterwauling.

“Show her your wings!” Dean yelled over your howling. Castiel stepped back a few paces, tightened his brow, and began to glow. The man was glowing a perfect iridescent blue, his eyes almost colorless in the light. Slowly huge black wings, at least nine feet in either directing, began to take hazy shape over his shoulders. It was similar to attempting to focus on the heat waves that sinuously rose from the pavement on a hot day- you knew they were there, you could perceive how they distorted other images, but you could never get a clear look at them.

Your jaw dropped, and you began trying to escape from Sam for a different reason. Castiel stopped glowing, his wings disappeared, and he stepped towards you again, this time successfully touching your forehead. The aches and pains from a day of lying bound on a table and then being drugged melted away from your poor body.

Everyone regarded you tensely for a moment. “Okay. Okay, I give in, dammit. This guy really must be an angel. And if angels exist, I can’t exactly deny the possibility of demons and other monsters. You win. Fuckers.” Sam let you go, and you crossed your arms over your chest.

Castiel turned to Sam and Dean. “We have not been able to find the source of demon activity.  It does not appear to be a new group of demons; more like one or two moving about quickly.”

“That sounds like some sort of scouting mission,” said Sam. “But why? We haven’t started any apocalypses recently.” He made a face.

I don’t know. We can watch some news tonight and check up on omens tomorrow.

You found yourself back in the giant black Chevy sitting next to the angel. You kept glancing at him out of the corner of your eye. He glanced down. “Have I inappropriately dressed my vessel again? This is what I normally clothe myself in.” He plucked at his backwards tie.

“No it’s just… you’re an angel. You must have seen so much. Have you seen God?”

“I have seen the history of your world, yes. I have not seen God. Only four of our number have seen our Father.”

He turned to stare out the window before. Eventually you pulled into a cheap motel somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana. You shifted uncomfortably in the car while Sam went in to het keys- being the only female in a car of strange virile men could do that to a girl.

Sam came back, tossing Castiel a room key. “I know you don’t sleep, but we need you to make sure that she doesn’t change her mind and run off overnight,” he said, jerking his thumb towards you.

Castiel nodded. “Yes. I will watch her.”

You entered the dingy motel room, Castiel following close at your heels. You didn’t know what you were supposed to do- you had no bags, no possessions, not even a toothbrush. After wandering aimlessly around the room, trying to ignore the unblinking gaze of the angel, you put toothpaste on your finger, ran it over your teeth, unbuttoned the top of your jeans, and crawled into one of the small sagging beds. You didn’t think you would be able to sleep, not knowing that there was someone just _watching_ you lay there. But soon you felt yourself drifting off, exhausted by the events of the day.

The sun was barely over the horizon when one of the brothers thumped on your door. “Rise and shine, we roll out in ten!” Dean yelled.

After finger-combing your hair back into a braid, you shuffled out the door wishing for at least a clean shirt. Or some deodorant. When you and Castiel slid into the backseat of the Impala, Sam turned and handed you a thin cardboard cup of the motel’s coffee. The only things that could be say about it was that it was hot and contained caffeine.

“So, day two of my captivity, what’s on the agenda?” you asked, your outlook moderately improved by coffee and sleep.

Sam laughed dryly. “Well, I watched a few news channels last night and looked for omens on the web- mysterious disappearances, crops failing, exploding livestock, that kind of thing. There hasn’t been any in this area, but seems to be steadily working up the Mississippi. Late last night all of the water, and I mean all of it, in a church was turned to blood. This was just outside St. Louis- the priest seems to think it was a group of satanic worshipers or kids playing a prank.

Dean scoffed. “Where would any kid or Satanist get _that_ much disposable blood? Yeah, I don’t think so.” Pulling onto the interstate, the little group headed north, Led Zeppelin blaring through the speakers.

After a few hours, Castiel turned to the men in the front. “I am being summoned,” he said abruptly, and disappeared in a flap of wings.

“Does he do that a lot?” you ask, gesturing to the empty seat beside you.

“Yea, things are pretty busy in heaven right now.”

You just sat there, thinking over everything you had learned in the last twenty-four hours.

Almost a full day later the Impala rolled into St. Louis, cruising along congested streets before arriving at the church in question. “Mean anything to you?” Dean asked as the three of you stiffly exited the car.

“No, I don’t think I ever came here.”

“You lived in St. Louis?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, I was fostered here for a while. But I was fostered all over the midwest, it wasn’t anything interesting.” Sam gazed at you levelly, thinking.

“Okay. Well, let’s go check this out.”

The Winchesters quickly duped the priest into believing you were new to the area and looking for a church to attend. Dean pulled you snug to his side, apparently to lend the impression that you were together while Sam snooped around.

“Sir, are occurences like the recent, er, incident common here?” you asked, doing your best to look innocent and concerned. Honestly, you doubted you could pull off ‘innocent’ at any point during your life.

He looked horrified, his hand going to the collar aorund his neck. “Oh, no, miss. This was highly unusual, it is a very quiet parish.”

Sam appeared behind the priest’s shoulder, jerking his head towards the door.

“Thank you for your time,” you say sweetly. Dean nods, and escorts you to the door, his arm still snugly around your waist. Once outside you shimmy away and take your place in the backseat.

“There was a bunch of sulfer behind the stature of St. Jude, this was definitely demons. Or one powerful demon.” Sam informed them.

“St. Jude. You think that was a coincidence?” Dean asked.

“St. Jude was the patron saint of lost causes,” you contribute. “What?” you ask when Sam looked at you questioningly. “One of my foster homes used to give out these little cards of the saints to us so that we would have someone to pray to. I was partial to Jude.”

“Mom used to sing that to us at night,” Dean comments, pulling into the parking lot of the local library. “Hey Jude was her favorite song by the Beatles.”

The car doors slam and you all troop inside. Sam found an empty table in the back corner of the reference area and the three of you take seats. “I think we are on the right track,” he said, opening up his laptop. “She was fostered here and knew about St. Jude. Mom used to love singing it to us… whoever is doing this, they clearly want us together.”

“Was this the first place you were forstered?” Dean asked, leaning over Sam’s shoulder to read the computer screen. “No. I was fostered in the Dakotas for a few years first, then bumped down to Iowa, then Illinois. I was all over,” you shrugged.

“How many places did they stick you?” asked Dean, looking a little horrified.

“Apparently seventeen places, but I don’t remember them all. Can we move on from this, now, please?”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” said Sam. “This morning, at 4:03 am exactly, every comatose patient in Shiloh General Hospital died.”

“Shiloh General?” Dean swallowed. “Wasn’t that where dad…” he trailed off.

“Yeah.” Sam nodded seriously.

You sighed. “That’s where they took me after somone found me in a box outside. My first records were made at that hospital.”

Dean scrubbed his hand over his face, his scruff rasping against his calloused palm. “Looks like we are going back to Sioux Falls,” he said roughly.

It was a tense ride in the Impala, the growl of the engine only paused to get gas or for Sam and Dean to switch places. Almost a full day later they arrived at the old hospital. Tension radiated from Sam and Dean’s shoulders. This was where their father had sold his soul for Dean’s. Just down the road was Bobby’s old scrap-yard. It seemed cruel that in all of their journeying, they should lose both father figures in the same small town. A place that had previously represented safety and a sense of belonging had been turned into a reminder of all that the boys had lost.

They stood outside, looking up at the plain cement walls of the building, light shining out of the sliding doors. “Now what?” you ask. After all, you had no memory of this place.

“We need to get in somehow and look around,” said Sam. He led the way around the building until you reached the ambulance bay. You didn’t have long to wait; about 20 minutes later an ambulance flew in, sirens blaring and lights strobing blindingly.  In the hustle of EMTs unloading the patient and orderlies meeting them at the bay, you and Sam and Dean slip into the hospital.

 Sam darted into a supply closet and the three of you waited in the dark until the disorder outside had died down. _A girl could have it worse_ you thought to yourself. After all, the Winchester brothers are both very attractive, nice smelling, available men.

Dean stuck his head out and looked around. He took off down the hall, you and Sam following after. He passed the elevator and took the stairs up to the third floor. A few doors down he stopped, the cheap fluorescent light overhead flickering. “I was in here. This is where Dad died.” He pulled something that could once have been a beat-up Walkman out of his pocket. It crackled a few times, then went quiet. “No EMF.”

“Where else should we look?” asked Sam, keeping his voice pitched down.  “The nursery area?” He gestures to you.

“They always have more security down there, let’s look there last,” you reply.

“Dad had to have made the deal somewhere private, somewhere he could perform a summoning ceremony.” Dean headed back for the stairs, this time taking them all the way past the “Personnel Only” sign to the basement. Adeptly picking the lock, he eased open the rusted metal door.

Exposed pipes filled the room, an electric panel hung on one of the walls. The three of you filed in, slowly looking around at the shadows cast by the single exposed bulb. You heard shuffling from the far corner, heavy soles scraping along the cement floor. You found yourself shoved behind a solid wall of Winchester, who had smoothly pulled guns from god-knows where.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” scolded a low voice from the dark. “You were supposed to watch out for Sam. And Sam… well boy, want to tell me why you made a trip to hell and didn’t even stop in to say hello?”

The figure stepped into the weak circle of light, and the boys took a step back.

“Dad?” asked Sam, voice cracking.

The figure grinned, yellow eyes glowing eerily. “Hello, kids.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John forces the boys to make another choice: save either Jody or Charlie.

"Dad?" Dean’s gun lowered slightly.

"Yes, son. Well, sort of. More like dad, 2.0. After all, it’s only been about 800 years since I sold my soul for you and left for the hot seat. Like you know, hell does things to a man.

You, see that’s why I am here- you boys set up a rescue mission to hell, stormed the gates, made it through purgatory, and for what? For Bobby Singer? For an old drunk who was too terrified to have kids of his own? Who gave up on life after his wife died- a man who couldn’t be bothered to get off his ass to go on more than a couple of hunts a year? Doesn’t seem right, boys. Not right at all.”

Sam jerked his gun up, took one step forward, head cocked and jaw working. His eyes burned, pupils wide. “That’s what this is about? You’re jealous we never sent you father’s day cards? We  _mourned you!_ We looked up every way we could think of to bring you back!”

"And when you found the way in, you went straight for good old Bobby. Did it ever occur to you that I might still have been hanging on when you came to hell? That your betrayal is what did this to me?" He jerked his thumb towards his yellow eyes. "Well, it finally got to me- and after all, it seemed fitting that after spending my life hunting the yellow eyed demon that I should become one. There was a job opening, you could say."

 

"So you’ve rubbed it in," said Dean, shifting his stance. "Now what? Why are you doing all of this? You want something from us?"

"Oh, no. I don’t want anything from you. You’re just going to have to live with the fact that you abandoned your father; that everything that happens from here on out- all the deaths, the gnashing of teeth, the suffering and panic- it will be because of you."

With a snap of his fingers, he disappeared.

Dean threw his hand down and kicked the water boiler across from him. “Son of a bitch! What do we do now?”

"That’s not dad, Dean. That’s what used to be dad."

"He’s right Sammy! Goddammit, he’s right. We went straight for Bobby- not a thought about Dad. We didn’t think about anyone else- not mom or Jo or Ellen. We went for Bobby." Dean’s eyes looked frantic, darting from thing to thing as though he was expecting John to jump out from anywhere. He was blinking quickly, eyes glassy.

Sam ducked out of the door, looking up the stairs. “We need to get out of here,” he said quickly. “Somebody was bound to have heard something.”

Dean shook his head and gestured for you to follow Sam out the door. Still between the Winchesters, you crept up the stairs and back towards the ambulance bays.

"Hey!" you hear behind you. "Visitors hours are over. Over. What are you doing here?"

"We were visiting our friend… who is having a baby," you said, making it up as you went.

"Really?" The nurse crossed her arm over her generous chest. "As far as I know, we don’t have any moms-to-be in here tonight."

"Run," you mumbled out of the side of your mouth before taking off at a flat-out sprint. Bypassing the ambulance bay the three of you headed straight for the front door, Sam in the lead. Behind you the nurse was yelling something, but you just ran for the Impala and hit the road as fast as possible.

"That’s another hospital we won’t be returning to," Sam murmured as the car pulled onto the highway.

"Forget the hospital. We have a bigger problem," said Dean, driving more wildly than usual, weaving in and out of the traffic.

"What are we going to do, Dean? Huh? Are we going to find dad by just yelling at each other? Or do you really want to summon him? Because this is not accomplishing anything."

You’d seen enough fights to know better than to get in the middle of this. You sank into the soft leather of the backseat, letting their raised voices wash over you like winter waves crashing into a beach. It was the same mental place you would go when you switched to a new school or when your foster parents fought. Been there, done that.

Dean drove through the night, his fingers tightening occasionally on the wheel until his knuckles turned white, his jaw grinding. He drove until the sun started to come up, you and Sam slumped into your seats breathing deeply. He pulled over onto a side road and slid into the back seat, letting Sam’s giant self sprawl out across the front.

You mumbled unhappily when Dean accidentally kneed you. “Scoot over,” he whispered, voice gravelly from lack of sleep. “I need to nap for a couple hours before we hit the road again.” Grumbling, you slid aside, curling against Dean, who rolled his eyes and let you snooze against him. He braced his feet on the door and flung one forearm over his eyes with you sprawled out on his chest. As the sun came up over the dry corn stalks the only sound in the Impala was the deep, even breathing of three lonely people who were tired to the depths of their souls. They were tired of never belonging and always watching over their shoulders. They were tired of barely making it by. They were tired of being jealous of families at the park or couples laughing over dinner. You and Dean and Sam were tired of it all, but slogging on anyway. Because that’s what mattered- that against all odds, you kept moving forward.

You woke up with the steady  _thu-thump_ of a heartbeat under your ear. Cracking open your eyes, you were presented with the sight of worn, faded flannel under your cheek. The events of yesterday came rushing back- the Winchester brothers, the drive, the confrontation with their demonic father.

Dean was still breathing deeply, his breath puffing against your hair. You stayed still against him, thinking. You’d never known your parents or found an adult your were particularly close to, so you couldn’t begin to know the kind of turmoil the brothers were in. Sam had easily accepted that John was a demon and hadn’t tried to defend his behavior; Dean had been consumed by shock and self-loathing. You’d put your money on Sam and John having some sort of history.

But what now? Would you be sent home on the bus to live with the knowledge that demons and angels and things that go bump in the night truly exist? Would the brothers keep you with them until their demon-daddy issue was resolved?

_Stop it_ you scolded yourself. Throughout your life you’d been forced to accept that most things were outside your control. You just had to see where life took you and do the best you could. You were adaptable. You could do this.

Dean stirred, and you pulled away. He cracked his neck and slowly slid out of the car to pop his back and roll his shoulders. He opened the driver’s door and shook his brother. “C’mon, Sammy. We can’t stay here all day.”

Sam sat up and scooted into the passenger’s seat with his hair mussed, looking disgruntled at the interruption. Dean piloted the Impala down the highway for an hour or two before finally stopping at a small town library. You all trooped inside, Sam armed with his trusty laptop.

"I don’t even know where to begin this one, Sammy," said Dean, slumped dejectedly in his chair. In this setting it was easy for you to picture high-school aged Dean- leather jacket, stick-it-to-the-man attitude, bedroom eyes, and a demeanor of having seen far too much to give a shit about algebra.

"What would you do on a normal case?" you asked.

Sam shrugged. “We’d try to figure out what the demon was after, what the goal was.”

"Okay, well you know that. This guy wants to fuck with you; he wants revenge," you replied.

"Okay, so then we would research them, try to predict their movements. Or we would find their bones," Sam said, catching onto the idea.

"We gave him a hunter’s funeral, there are no bones to burn," mused Dean. "But he is trying to punish us for rescuing Bobby. We know that. Should we revisit our lives with him?"

"Couldn’t hurt," said Sam. "I don’t see any new demon activities cropping up." He shut his laptop with a click.

Dean held the library door open for you and Sam. “Lawrence?”

"Lawrence," Sam echoed. The doors to the Impala slammed, the engine revving in the waning light.

~~~

The three of you stood outside the old house on the sidewalk. According to county records it had been on the market for eight months with no offers. Dean had seemed mildly offended by that fact, but Sam hadn’t been surprised. Sometimes objects picked up the energy of spirits haunting them- from what Sam had said, this house had seen its share of misery. You looked up at Sam, his profile backlit by the morning sun. It occurred to you that this giant of a man had never had an address to call home. Dean could vaguely remember what it was like before Azaezel and the fire, back when his mother was a happy, soft presence in his world. Sam had never known any of that. To him this was someone else’s house, a thing that happened to other people.

Dean popped the trunk of the Implala and drew out the Colt revolver, the demon knife, and several flasks of holy water. You’d been instructed on the nature of demon hunts, but the whole thing still sounded slightly ludicrous to you.

Skirting around the back of the house, you watched Dean elbow a pane of glass out of the back door. The shards scraped across the wood floor as he pushed the door open into the kitchen. The floor joists creaked as Dean and Sam padded across the floor in front of you.

They swept their guns side to side and up and down in each new room they entered. The brothers were eerily synchronized in their motions, veterans of a war nobody else had witnessed; wounded soldiers of battles for which they would never be thanked. That was all they had known- moving from place to place, fighting monster after monster, preventing crisis after crisis.

Dean took a deep breath and squared his shoulders before entering the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. You assumed this was the fated nursery- your suspicions were confirmed when Dean glanced first at the ceiling before looking at the rest of the room.

The room was empty, dust motes swirling in the light that made it through the dingy windows. Sam lowered his gun and looked around, taking everything in. There was a postcard tacked to the closet door. It pictured fall trees in all of their brilliant colors with the words “Oakland, Maryland” scrawled in the corner. He turned it over; there was nothing written on the back.

"I went to most of first grade here, remember?" he asked Dean.

"No, I don’t remember that.”

"It was after he found a way to forge other school records," Sam said, more to himself to you and Dean. "He wouldn’t let me go to school until then because  he was sure that social services would take us away again." Absentmindedly he stuffed the postcard in a back pocket.

"That’s right," said Dean.  "He stole us back from the foster house and ran with us to Maryland. He worked that poltergeist case and ran into a couple hunters who taught him to forge paperwork."

"Is he trying to remind us of all the things he did for us? Because this isn’t working. We might have been better off in the foster system."

You doubted that. To you, any interested parent was better than none.

"No. We were family. Family sticks together," insisted Dean. He stomped down the stairs and stowed his weapons back in the Impala.

Oakland was just as small and tired-looking as Sam remembered it. The motel they had lived in was gone, so Dean drove around to Oakland Elementary.   It had been converted into a community center now, but was “temporarily closed.” In this case, you guessed “temporarily” meant until the economy improved. The three of you walked around the school, looking for an easy access point.

"Nice for you to finally join us, boys," said a cold voice. John was leaning against the side entrance to the old building nonchalantly, a knife spinning in his fingers.

“Us? Us who?” asked Dean, shifting his gaze around the area.

“Oh, I’ve got a couple of your friends inside who are waiting on you. You boys like making tough decisions, so I figured you could play along. Have fun.” He snapped his fingers and disappeared. Sam and Dean glanced at each other before prying open the door and cautiously slipping inside.

They were in a long hallway, decrepit lockers hanging loosely on the walls. Only the emergency lights were flickering overhead, leaving the three of you to walk from one little pool of light to the next. Dean and Sam tested the side doors, all of which were locked. About three-quarters of the way down a door was unlocked on the right. At first scan of the room, there were just two women lying next to each other on lab tables.

“Jody! Charlie!” Dean and Sam ran forward to check the women.

“Back boys,” murmured Jody. “The snake’s still in here.”

Sam and Dean looked around before seeing a small snake curled up in the sun underneath a dusty desk. “We’ve both been bit, Charlie’s out,” said Jody. “She got hit first. Antivenin is on the desk.”  Jody’s eyes closed and she let out a deep breath.

Sam shot the snake, which twitched until he shot it again. Jody’s eyelid’s fluttered a little while Dean took Charlie’s pulse. It was thready and quick. “Watch her,” he told you while he read the antivenin label. “There’s only enough here for one of them. Just one.” He looked at his brother.

“That’s the choice Dad was talking about.” Dean and Sam began arguing over which one of the women they should inject. You slipped out of your jacket and yanked your tank over your head.

“What are you doing?” Dean sputtered. “Really”-

“Shut up, Dean,” you said, zipping your jacket back up. Biting the side seam, you ripped it down the middle. “This thing is stretchy and will make a tourniquet for Jody since she was bitten after the redhead. We passed a hospital a few miles back- this is the biggest town in the county, did a doctor never occur to you?” You finished tying the tourniquet high on Jody’s thigh.

Sam picked up the body of the snake. “She’d right, and the doctors will need to know the kind of venom they are dealing with. Let’s go.” Dean injected Charlie and picked her up, her hair lolling over his arm. Sam slung Jody over his shoulder and jogged out to the car.

Dean tore through the cracked roads following the blue hospital signs. You were in the back monitoring the women. With your fingers pressed to Charlie’s neck just under her jaw, you felt her pulse stutter, stutter, stop.

You slid her down as flat you could and knelt in the small space between the seats. You began chest compressions, calling out to the boys, “Lost a pulse on Charlie and Jody’s on her way out!”

Sam spun in his seat to press two long fingers against Jody’s jugular while you blew two puffs of air down Charlie’s throat. The only sound in the car was the thump of your hands over her sternum and the loud roar of the engine as Dean pushed the Impala even faster. A few minutes later he pulled in the ambulance bay of the hospital. Sam sprinted into the building to find an EMT team and a gurney while Dean scooped up Jody and sprinted into the building, heavy boots echoing on the concrete. You kept up the chest compressions, your shoulders beginning to ache.

A medical team ran out the door and within seconds you were standing alone by the idling Impala, an island in a sea of cement, the only still figure in a receding crowd of organized chaos. You stood there as the door slammed shut, abruptly cutting off the sound of nurses yelling and machines beeping and gurney wheels squealing along the tile.

You stood in the silence for a moment, the Impala illuminated by the bright lights of the ambulance bay. You slammed the doors and slowly cruised through the lot looking for a parking spot. Pocketing Dean’s keys, you shoved your hands deep into your jacket pockets and wandered into the emergency area, looking for either brother. They were nowhere to be found, so you settled yourself into one of the hard grey waiting room chairs and let the hours blur by- nurses came and went with clipboards and carts; families flew in and out, carrying with them clouds of panic and anxiety. Babies cried fitfully, wheelchairs creaked, and over it all floated the strained sound of a Brady Bunch marathon, a discordant note of family values and a different time in the clinical and desperate hospital.

Hours later, long after the staff shift change, Dean wandered back to find you.

“We saved them both. Well, you saved them. Jody still might lose the leg to infection or gangrene, but they’ll both be okay. They’ll be okay.” He looked defeated- deep circles made his haunted eyes seem even more tired, his shoulders hunched just enough to convey a deep and total exhaustion. You stiffly stood up to face whatever else this day would throw at you.

“That’s good. I’m glad they’ll be okay. They seem important to you guys.”

“Yeah. Sam’s back doing more of the paperwork, and then we’ll say goodbye and head out.” He shifted in his boots.

Slowly he tugged you into a hug, and you leaned your weight into each other. He smelled like old whiskey and wood smoke, clean male sweat and motor oil. It was an odd combination, but homey and safe. With a huff into your hair he pulled back, dropping his arms to his sides. You turned to follow him through the hospital halls, realizing that the life you’d had before was over.

This was going to be your life, for a while at least. No longer would you have to watch your own back. You weren’t just worrying about yourself anymore. And for the first time, you were a part of something bigger- you’d been drafted into battle, but this time you had someone in the foxhole with you. Yes, you and the Winchester brothers were in this together for however long it lasted; as strange as it seemed, you were determined to help these men send their father back to hell.


End file.
